Lack of common sense aside, there’s more than a little political positioning going on here, some fuckery on the extreme right that then allows Mitt, the party’s presidential candidate, to swoop in looking like a moderate-seeming Rape Savior by contrast–never mind that his sidekick Paul Ryan seems to have a rape problem, too–who can then say, I’m not as crazy as these dicks! Therefore, I’m pro-women!

But it’s 2012. I’m not fighting for women’s rights only in the case of rape, incest, and life-threatening danger. I’m fighting for women’s rights, period. I should not have to be raped, made the victim of incest, or have some life-threatening condition in order to be allowed to make decisions about my own body.

With “February sweeps” right around the corner–one of the “sweeps months” when networks pull out all the stops to juke ratings so that, based on those increased viewership numbers, they can set ad prices for the rest of the year–I wanted to talk about the recent dustup over CBS’ new hit sitcom 2 Broke Girls, which will resume airing new episodes next week.

Michael Patrick King and the 2 Broke Girls at the TCA Event

A few weeks ago at the Television Critics Association’s (TCA) Winter Press Tour, 2 Broke Girls‘ co-creator Michael Patrick King, who’s best known for his work on Sex and the City, became defensive over reporters’ questions concerning the broke-ass racial and ethnic stereotypes on the show.

If you haven’t seen the show, the stereotypes in question involve the show’s secondary characters who work at the same diner as the two broke girls. There’s Oleg, the pervy Ukrainian cook; Earl, the black, jive-talking cashier; and Han Lee, the diner owner, a Korean immigrant who speaks in heavily-accented Engrish and is frequently the butt of jokes because of his “foreign-ness.” Andrew Ti, the razor-sharp mind behind Yo, Is This Racist?, describes Han in a Grantland post as a “tiny, greedy, sexless man-child.” Most of the questions that appeared to anger King at the TCA event concerned the particularly offensive portrayal of Han Lee.

I know, I know. It’s just a clothing line! Lighten up! And it’s so kawaii as the ads keep telling me, forcing the word on me like a pacifier to the lips of a crying, reluctant babe. (Wouldn’t be surprised if Gwen Stefani had tried to trademark the Japanese word for “cute” some time in the last 5 years or so. She’s already pretty much got “Harajuku”–the name of a Tokyo neighborhood–locked down legally.) And look, the Harajuku Mini for Target children’s clothes collection, which launches Sunday online and in stores, is “kawaii,” in a “What if a little panda cub who was part skater-punk threw up and it looked like lollipops and rainbows?” sorta way.

But, you know, I can forgive, but I can’t forget. Wait, who am I kidding? I can’t forgive either! Because when I see this ad plugging Gwen Stefani’s latest business venture…

Renowned satirical artist and Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, who disappeared in early April and has been detained under shaky allusions to “economic crimes” by the Chinese government for over two months, has finally been released. After admitting to tax evasian, promising to pay fines, and showing a good attitude in detainment, the outspoken trailblazer is FREE AT LAST.

Free to move freely around Beijing, that is, as long as he notifies authorities every time he leaves the house.

Free, despite the fact that he can’t give interviews, make a peep on social media outlets (with 90k followers, Twitter was a major tool for Ai, who tweeted about disappearing activists, human rights violations, etc. prior to his detainment), or step outside of the city without permission. Though he cheerfully emerged to say hello to reporters and the International community this week, Ai has made it clear that he cannot speak publicly about his investigation or life situation, for “at least a year,” intimating a gag order that authorities won’t confirm.

An activist without a voice? That’s a prison unto itself. Let’s not pretend Ai Weiwei is free when he isn’t.

TMZ, which operates under the auspices of AOL News, definitely serves a purpose. In life, there’s always somebody that has to reside in the murkiest layer–the person that denies insurance benefits to cancer patients, the defense attorney that attacks victims in order to save her guilty defendant, the jerk that has to tell little kids that there is no Santa Claus. TMZ is like that person. The supergossip team’s shamelessness allows them to dig deep into the wounds of Hollywood to tell us who’s crazy, who’s dead, who has anal sex with prostitutes instead of their wife, who’s suing their ex, who’s blown all of their money on 8 balls. Without them, we wouldn’t know such things, at least not so quickly and with no tactful filter. It’s questionable whether or not we’d ever want to, but that’s not the point. Bottom line, as I said before: TMZ has a purpose, I guess.

Yesterday, the site posted a segment featuring an on-the-fly “interview” with Sung Kang, one of Jen’s many hot boyfriends and familiar sexyface from the Fast & Furious franchise (You can see him alive again in the upcoming sequel,Fast Five). See below:

Guys, seriously, Groupon did a good thing, okay? Because after they aired that Super Bowl ad about Tibetans-being-oppressed-but-who-gives-a-shit-when-we-can-save-money (above), we’re actually talking about Tibet today. And when’s the last time anyone talked about Tibet? At a Bjork concert in 2008? Groupon’s made Tibet hip to talk about again! I mean, sure, talk is cheap, but so are things you buy with Groupons!

Limbaugh–always a victim of the left–called his racist tirade “a service.” But I call it a big, sweaty, hairy back off of which even more brainless (Imagine!), more hateful, more ignorant, more racist dickburgers saw the opportunity to leapfrog, into a space much more dark, even dangerous.

I am not a fan of Glee. You’d think I would be, since I love to sing, I love me a high school drama (past and present faves include Buffy, the oridge 90210, Freaks and Geeks, Friday Night Lights), I was once in an a cappella singing group–I was even in a choir with Jane Lynch for two seconds–and I watch shows like American Idol and The Sing Off without irony, not a lick of it. But a Gleek I’m not. The show lacks any likable female characters–Lynch’s Sue Sylvester is the closest thing, and she’s a monster, albeit a funny one–and the teacher guy creeps me out for some reason, probably owing to the fact that he looks like a Chia pet. And the fact that he couldn’t tell his wife wasn’t really pregnant WHICH IS JUST TOTALLY PREPOSTEROUS. But I’m not going to harp on it further, because it makes people happy for some strange reason, and it’s done some good things for the world, like introducing millennials to music that was popular when forty year-olds were young like them, which probably seems just as preposterous as Glee‘s fake pregnancy.

I guess the Kings of Leon feel the same way I do (as does Slash), because the band refused to give Glee the rights to its songs. And you’d think they’d be flattered, right, because who the fuck are the Kings of Leon again? One day they’re a Skynyrd-type outfit, the next they’re arena rockers with fancy haircuts requiring lots of “product” or something? I couldn’t name a single song of theirs because it all sounds like generic radio to me.

There’s been a lot of talk this year about how America’s schools are failing its children. That talk has focused primarily on two separate issues: 1) the quality of education and 2) bullying in schools. In the case of South Philadelphia High School in the Philadelphia School District, however, the school and its district failed on both fronts.

The following is a timeline of events that transpired over the last year at South Philadelphia High School and in the Philadelphia School District. Most of the links direct to posts by Angry Asian Man, who was our main source–and probably many others’–on these events:

On December 3, 2009, 26 Asian students were attacked and beaten by a large group of their peers, mostly African American, throughout the school day at South Philadelphia High. 13 of the students who were attacked wound up in the hospital. There was already a history of violence against Asian students–many of them immigrants–at the school, whose student body is, according to current stats, 64.6% African American, 22.4% Asian American, 6.3% White, 5.8% Latino, and .8% Other, yet district officials were quick to dismiss that the December 3rd attacks had been racially motivated.

After meeting with district officials following the attacks, a group of over 60 Asian students from South Philadelphia High remained unconvinced that their safety at school would be ensured and organized an eight day-long boycott. Wei Chen, a senior at the time, made this statement for the group:

But for 46 year-old Chinese woman, Cheng Jianping, aka @wangyi09, the price of a Tweet is valued at one year in a labor camp.

Last month, Cheng RT’ed a message (see above) originally posted by her fiance, Hua Chunhui, satirically suggesting that young Chinese nationalists who had been staging recent anti-Japanese rallies should attack the Japanese pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo. They were both arrested not long after on the day they were to be married; Hua was released five days later. That Cheng was sentenced to a year of hard labor without a trial while Hua was not may have to do with the fact that Cheng has gotten into trouble for her social media activity in the past. From the NY Times:

Widely known by the online name Wang Yi, Ms. Cheng is avidly followed by a small coterie of Chinese intellectuals who subscribe to Twitter, which is blocked in China but can be reached by those willing to burrow beneath the government’s firewall. Most recently Ms. Cheng sent out messages praising the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the imprisoned rights activist Liu Xiaobo. Last August, she was briefly detained after expressing sympathy for a detained democracy advocate, Liu Xianbin.

A Republican candidate running for the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates public utility companies (among other responsibilities), has proposed a change in policy in the event of his election:

Serving a growing number of people with power, he said, raises utility rates because it requires building new power plants. He said asking utilities not to serve illegal immigrants could protect other ratepayers from utility hikes…

“…I’m sure there will be criticism about human-rights violations,” Wong said of his utility proposal. “Is power or natural gas or any type of utility we regulate, is that a right that people have? It is not a right. It is a service.”

Declaring oneself anti-immigrant seems to be increasingly en vogue in Arizona, and critics have accused Wong of making these controversial remarks, targeting illegal immigrants, in order to win votes. (It should be noted that Arizona’s commission is one of the few in the United States to employ elected officials.) Funnily enough, even the most vocal anti-immigrant politicians in the state have shied away from Wong’s ideas. Wong of course denies making his claims purely for election buzz, saying, “”I don’t need to take on these issues for election purposes. I served on the Corporation Commission.”

Perhaps the most shameful part of such accusations is that they’re even plausible. When did a lack of humanity become a pathway to power?